


Priority: Thessia

by Oroburos



Series: Nate Shepard Saves the Galaxy [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Bilingual Character(s), Canon-Typical Violence, Evolving Tags, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-09 07:49:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oroburos/pseuds/Oroburos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate Shepard and crew head to Thessia and everything goes all pear-shaped. </p><p>(The author played through the Thessia mission, went "wtf?", and decided to rewrite the entire thing. Same plot outcomes, different circumstances, entirely new dialogue. BECAUSE REALLY) </p><p>(evolving tags: mshenko in chapter 2)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Shepard paced in relentless circles while, outside the temple, Thessia burned. They’d paid a lot of lives to get here and so far had only found dead ends, dead Asari, and unanswered questions. Liara was poking around the sanctuary trying to find a clue to lead them to the secret they’d came for. And James? James watched the door. Somebody had to. 

 

So they were sitting there with their thumbs up their asses, while James watched a reaper outside swat fighters out of the sky like gnats. And suddenly, Shepard stopped dead. he stared up at the statue of the goddess, and James heard him mutter “Beacon” from across the room. 

Shepard spun and called out, “There’s a Prothean Beacon here!” 

“What?!” Liara jumped up from the floor mosaic she’d been examining and rushed to Shepard’s side. “A beacon? Here? Are you sure?” 

“Positive,” Shepard affirmed. “I can--” and he faltered just a moment, “I can _hear_ it.” 

James frowned. He knew about Shep’s crazy Prothean mind-meld stuff. Shepard had told him about it, while he was in Lockup. And complained about how much he hated it.

Liara looked uncertain. “This temple has stood for thousands of years...If there’s a beacon here, my people should have found it long ago.” 

“They probably did,” Shepard pointed out.  
“Makes sense, Doc,” James put in. “Would explain how your people’ve stayed on top for all this time. Pull out a new discovery every couple of centuries and boom. Keep just ahead of the rest of the galaxy that nobody suspects anything.” 

Liara frowned and looked down. 

“Let the politicians worry about all that shit,” Shepard said. “Our only concern is getting to the damned thing. Liara, did you find any leads?” 

 

The two of them spent the next 20 minutes or so playing Asari Trivial Pursuit. Shepard would lead the Doc someplace he could hear the Beacon calling him ( _’Creepy as hell,’_ James thought). And Liara would puzzle out the significance of the area or the artifact, which would in turn lead them to a cleverly hidden switch somewhere nearby. It had a lot to do with esoteric Asari mythology that James didn’t really pay attention to. He was busy keeping his guard up, watching the shadows. 

He figured that whoever had come in here, slit the Asari scientists’ throats and left them to bleed to death on the ground, probably had a good reason to and _probably_ was still around. It wasn’t Reaper work. Whoever did it had a motive, whether they were a rival political movement or insurrectionists, or maybe just Indoctrinated. Either way, James had a feeling they wouldn’t just _leave_. 

Back in the sanctuary, Liara called out in triumph as a section of the floor slid away and a platform rose up, carrying a familiarly shaped green pillar. Shepard frowned at it. Liara immediately got to work, fingers flying over the Beacon’s terminal and flitting back to her omnitool, back and forth. Her voice was high and excited and she was talking very fast about stuff that was way too technical for James to follow. Hell, he didn’t care. This thing was supposed to win the war for them, and as long as it did-- 

 

\--Movement on his six. Scopes were clear, but he trusted his senses more and he spun, rifle coming up to point into the shadows. The wavering emergency lights made them move strangely, like in old vids of haunted houses. James didn’t waver, keeping an eye on his peripheral--

 

Without any warning, the heatsink in his gun overloaded, exploding in his hands and burning his face and as he flinched back he felt the tingle of biotics surround him and cold metal press against his throat, cutting right through his armor to bite into his neck. He would’ve frozen, but the stasis field didn’t give him a choice. 

 

\------

 

Shepard was gun-drawn-and- _moving_ , Liara two steps behind him, before the sound of the explosion finished booming through the room. His dead run came up short at the sight of James--blood on his face and blood from his neck running down the blade held against his throat--and the black-clad figure using him as a human shield. He swore. Kai Leng. 

 

“Take him out, Commander!” James called, “I’ll be f--” his words ended in a choked noise and more blood welled up and ran down the blade.

 

“The edge of my sword is mere millimeters from your jugular vein,” Kai Leng warned. “I’d advise against moving.” 

 

 _One breath._ Shepard calculated. Trajectory, distance, odds of catching Leng right on that bare forehead barely visible past James' shoulder. Odds of hitting him and not James, odds that if he _did_ the death spasm wouldn’t jerk the sword inward and sever James’ trachea. Odds of getting James back to the ship before he drowned in his own blood. It was bad. Shepard wasn’t certain he could make the shot-- _’Garrus could’ve. Why didn’t I bring Garrus?’_ \--, wasn’t certain he could take Leng out without collateral. He would lose James. That was unacceptable. Shepard refused to lose anyone else. 

 

“What the hell do you want, Leng?” Shepard spat. 

“Your attention,” Leng answered. From somewhere behind him, a spherical drone floated up and hovered towards Shepard. He didn’t take his aim off Leng to track it, trusting Liara to cover him if the drone went hostile. It stopped in front of Shepard and opened like a flower, lit up and revealed itself as a portable holo-emitter. 

 

A pillar of light resolved itself into an asshole in a suit. The Illusive Man spread his hands in greeting. “Shepard--” 

 

 _ **Blam!**_ The ruined hunk of metal crashed to the ground. “I’m not interested in talking,” Shepard said dryly, his AR already pointed back at Leng. 

 

A dry, disembodied chuckle filled the sanctuary. “Ah, Shepard. Predictable as always.” 

 

The Illusive Man resolved, again, in front of Shepard, and took a drag from an ever-present cigarette. “You should be careful. Someone could use that against you.” 

 

Shepard narrowed his eyes, but resisted the urge to track the holo as it moved about. The lightshow wasn’t the threat here, Leng was. He ignored the holo as it walked through him, back toward the beacon. He heard Liara turn and track him, and he knew she was looking for the new emitter. Of course, Leng probably had the whole place on vid, faithfully recreated for The Illusive Man in his secret hiding hole. Probably displayed in miniature for him, too, like a chessboard. Fucking dramatics. 

 

“Shepard,” TIM’s voice somehow came from everywhere, “There’s no solid reason for you and I to be at odds.” 

“I beg to differ,” Shepard argued. “Maybe you should quit trying to kill my people.” 

“”If I wanted him dead, he would be,” Leng said. 

_“Cállate o te callo yo!”_ Shepard growled. 

“An unfortunate necessity,” TIM said dryly, ignoring the exchange. “We are, after all, well aware of your propensity to shoot first and ask questions later.” 

 

Shepard stayed silent, trying to figure out if he could provoke Leng into fucking up just a little. Just enough to give him a clear shot at his face. 

 

“We’re on the same side here, Shepard,” TIM continued. “We have the same goal: Survival.” 

“Then why the hell do I keep running into your ass?” Shepard said. _’This is taking too long, James’ll bleed out at this rate. Just a little to the left...’_ He kept TIM talking, hoping for distraction. “Why did you attack the Citadel? The Council?” 

“The Council is a roadblock, which you know almost better than I do,” TIM explained. “They’ve done nothing but sabotage your efforts, refuse to work with each-other, and nurse centuries-old wounds of pride.” 

 

Shepard had to admit he had a point. “And the kids at Grissom?”

 

“Humanity’s finest,” TIM said with pride, and the holo walked around Shepard to face him again. “The Alliance would send them back to their families, scattered, where they would inevitably be attacked and slaughtered by the Reapers. _We_ would put that bright potential to work for the war effort.” He pointed at Shepard. “Which is exactly what _you’ve_ done.” 

“They volunteered,” Shepard pointed out. 

“True. But the results are the same.” 

 

Shepard’s aim was wavering. The lightshow was getting in his eyes. “Why do you keep going against the Alliance?” 

TIM stepped forward, in Shepard’s way, gesturing. “Because the _Alliance_ is going about this war in entirely the wrong way. You’re putting all your eggs in one basket, shoving all your resources towards building a superweapon, and you don’t even know what it _does_.” 

Wherever Shepard moved, TIM’s holo seemed to follow. Keeping the lightshow in his eyes, between him and the dog with his knife at James’ neck. “There is so much more you could be doing, Shepard. You should be studying the Reapers, learning how they work. Learning to understand them--” 

 

“Understand them?!” Shepard interrupted. “Did you just _forget_ about the Indoctrination issue?” 

 

“Not an insurmountable problem, Shepard.” TIM stepped back, still in Shepard’s way, but a little less in his face. “In order to defeat your enemy, you have to understand your enemy. Trying to fight something you don’t understand only guarantees your own doom. You know this, Shepard, just as well as I do.” 

 

The holo was in front of him. Shepard couldn’t aim through it. The lightshow was making his eyes run. Muscles were starting to ache from the tension.

 

“Shepard. Cerberus has the funding, the intel, and the willingness to look for answers beyond what’s force-fed to us by a long-dead alien race. Beyond the obvious. You have the charisma and the willingness to do what needs to be done. There isn’t any reason that we can’t come to an agreement. You don’t need to trust me, Shepard. Only what I can do for you, what _we_ can do, for humanity.” 

 

The barrel of his AR wavered. Shepard hated to admit it, but The Illusive Man had points. There were truths in what he was saying. But just beyond the lightshow, he could see James bleeding. And he remembered Kaidan, deathly pale and unmoving. He remembered all the half-truths and manipulations that had chased him as he’d chased the Collectors. Toombs blowing out his own brains. Kohoku’s dead body. His squadmates on Akuze, telling him to run. 

 

“Go to hell, Timmy.” 

 

The Illusive Man frowned. He took a drag off his cigarette, and exhaled faithfully-recreated holographic smoke into the air. “I can see we’ve reached an impasse,” he said, disappointed, and turned in dismissal. “Leng. Take care of this.” And he flickered out of sight. 

 

Leng wasted no breath on words. One quick movement, a spray of blood. James fell and Leng vanished. 

“James!” Shepard cried, and then, “Liara!” 

“On it!” she acknowledged and ran over to James, already pulling out a pressure bandage and dialing up a dose of medigel. 

Shepard covered her, eyes up and scanning for the shimmer of Leng’s tactical cloak. He spotted it just in time to jerk sideways. Leng’s sword, glowing blue, stabbed through the air he’d just vacated. The assassin recovered and threw out a biotic wave that staggered Shepard and pushed him back. Shepard dug in his heel to stop his movement and pushed forward into a raw charge, body-checked Leng before he could strike at Liara. 

Leng recovered and leapt away. Away from Shepard’s squad, and he fired at the assassin to keep the pressure on. 

Leng wouldn’t have it, he crouched low to the ground, barrier up to deflect Shepard’s unaimed shots. He threw up a warp that shredded Shepard’s shields and leapt in to close the distance. 

 

Leng was fast. Too fast. Much faster than Shepard, even running high on adrenaline. His AR, useless in such close quarters, got knocked out of his hands and clattered off somewhere in the shadows. He caught a strike on his gauntlet and the sword bit through it like his armor was made out of paper. _’What the fuck is that thing MADE of?’_ Shepard suddenly missed Thane like a hole in his chest. Thane would’ve wiped the floor with this asshole. 

 

Shepard finally saw an opening, threw his fist in through Leng’s defenses. Felt it connect and the kinetic force spread out through that black armor, and heard Leng grunt in response. 

 

The assassin disengaged, stepped back and threw a wave of biotic force that lifted Shepard off his feet and sent him flying backward. His spine and the back of his head cracked against a pillar, leaving him dazed as he crumpled down to the floor. 

 

He heard a roar. Looked over and flinched away as the far wall of the sanctuary blasted inward. A pair of gunships hovered outside the hole. Shepard pulled himself into cover behind the pillar just as they opened fire. 

He glanced across the room at his team. Liara had gotten James pulled behind a tiny stone bench, but it wasn’t enough cover. Liara was shimmering blue, hands held upwards, holding a Barrier field over them both. And the gunships were hammering at her. Streams of bullets and rocket blasts slammed into the barrier and the surrounding stone. 

 

 _’Please stay alive,’_ Shepard prayed. Where the fuck was Leng? 

 

Shepard saw him, visible, standing at the Beacon with his omnitool out. That bastard was ripping their data! Again! 

 

Shepard had lost his AR and his sniper rifle had been crushed when he hit the pillar. But he still had his Scorpion. He drew the side-arm, took aim, and checked himself. Waited for Leng to move away from the beacon so it wouldn’t get caught in the blast. Watched Leng walk, _casually_ , towards Liara who was still holding steady under the gunship’s assault, purple blood starting to run down her face. 

A few shots were fired wildly from the floor which Leng, the arrogant bastard, deflected off his Barrier. _’James. Never count out a marine.’_ Shepard took his aim, squeezed the trigger. A shining blue sticky grenade shot out the barrel and sailed across the room, landing just next to Leng’s boot. The assassin didn’t notice it until it went off. 

 

The explosion was nothing compared to the rockets the gunships were firing, bringing down the pillars and starting the ceiling crumbling. Leng went stealth, but Shepard had drawn blood. He saw it tracking up the aisle towards the hole in the wall, dodging past the gunship’s fire. 

 

The air was full of lead, but Shepard chanced it anyway. He sprang out of cover, following the blood trail. Felt the air heat up from a near-miss and marble shards spark his shields. _’I’m not letting you get away, asshole. Not this time!’_

 

A gunship tracked him, filled his path with lead. He rolled out of the way but it still bit into his shields. He heard the warning alarm as they collapsed. He didn’t care. He sprang to his feet and ran. Leng was still ahead and gaining. The blood was tracking over the rubble at the door, climbing over, heading for the gunships. Shepard surged forward. 

 

Just as he was nearly there, a shockwave hit him from behind. Threw him forward, through the hole, tumbling. He hit the ground hard and scrambled up to his feet. 

 

Just in time to see Leng hop into the gunship. 

 

He pulled his Scorpion and fired. The first shot went wide, the second hit and stuck but the blast was nothing to the gunship’s armor plating. The ship turned, flew away. Shepard kept firing out of anger, frustration, desperation. 

 

Too late. They were gone. 

 

\--------------

 

Liara crawled out of the rubble of the temple, half carrying James. Shepard was standing still and stiff as a statue, staring up at the sky. His pistol had fallen empty from his hands. 

 

“Shepard,” she said, weak with blood loss and the effort of carrying the injured. He didn’t seem to hear her. 

 

Their comms crackled on. “Cortez to fireteam! We’ve got Reapers inbound!” 

 

Shepard didn’t move. Didn’t say a thing. 

 

“Commander! Fireteam, do you read me? If we don’t get out of here soon, we never will!” 

 

Liara reached for Shepard’s shoulder. “Nathaniel…” 

 

He turned. Liara felt James recoil in shock. She struggled to hold him upright, and control her own reaction. “Nathaniel,” she said, choked. “We...we have to go--” 

 

Shepard’s eyes were three pinpricks of angry, crimson red. Red, like the beams of the Reapers who were vaporizing Liara's planet into dust. 

 

He frowned, and touched his comm. “Cortez. Come pick us up.” 

 

It took the two of them to lift James, barely-conscious, into the shuttle. Cortez did a double-take, yelled something in Portuguese, and called ahead to the Normandy for a medical team to meet them in the shuttle bay. 

 

The flight up was completely silent, but for James’ laboured breath. Liara closed her eyes, trying to block out the images burned into her mind. 

 

Shepard was staring at the door. Looking at no one. Silent. The entire shuttle heard it when he hissed in sudden pain. He lifted his glove to his face. It came away bloody.


	2. Chapter 2

The shuttle door swung open and Shepard handed James off to a pair of burly enlisted waiting with a stretcher. And then he got out of the shuttle and out of the way. 

He stood off to the side, alone. Separate. Chakwas spared a glance his way, worried frown creasing her forehead. He shook his head at her. _’Focus on the patient in front of you, Doc,’_ he thought her way, _’Them first. Take care of them.’_ Then he turned away, broke contact. _’I am a lower priority.’_

He made sure Liara got off alright. He knew she had been injured, but not how badly. Holding her barrier up against that barrage had to have caused trauma. _’And watching her home get blown to bits has to have caused a whole different sort of trauma.’_ He watched the med crew gather her up. Then watched Steve climb out, hover near James a moment, and then follow the med crew right into the elevator. 

 

Shepard walked over to the lockers. He stripped off his ruined gear, stowed it mechanically. He peeled off his hardsuit under-mesh, ignoring the protests of his busted ribs. 

_’Walk it off, Nate.’_

He pulled on his trousers. Laced his boots up with fingers that he fought to keep from shaking. Stood, and leaned on his hands against the lockers, bent low from the weight he could feel settling on his shoulders. He caught a glance of himself in the reflection of the metal. He looked away. 

_’Focus, Nate.’_

To hell with it. Let the Council see him beaten and bloody. Let Hackett see him out of uniform. He walked out. Marched himself into the elevator. Hit the level button. Leaned his head back against the wall as the car rose, slow as hell. 

_’Keep it together, Nate.’_

He stood as the doors slid open and put his Commander Shepard Game Face on. Stalked out into the CIC. Passed Traynor’s station, where she took one look at him and shrank back away as he passed. Passed the door guards, who saluted stiff with wide eyes. As soon as he was past he heard one of them say to her partner, _”Holy shit, did you see his **eyes**!?”_

He entered the War Room and walked along the catwalk, passing men and women at their stations, ignoring the wave of tense silence he left in his wake. He entered the Vidcom Room and closed the door. 

 

“Moreau. Status.” He said to the air. 

“Sky’s hot, Commander,” Jeff came back. “The Asari fleets are starting to fall back.” 

“Withdraw to Watchdog range,” he ordered. “Keep us silent. Record as much intel as you can, then pipe it off to the Fleet.” 

“Aye, sir.” 

“Assemble the combat crew in the War Room. And patch me in to Hackett.” 

Shepard stood at stiff parade rest, waiting for the Admiral’s holo-image to coalesce. He focused on a spot just over holo’s shoulder. Tightly. Unmoving. 

_’Come on, Nate. Hold it together.’_

 

The Admiral shifted in. His face was hard to read through the static, but his voice came through clearly. “Commander Shepard.” How easily those two words shifted from surprise into resigned wariness. _’Already planning around my failure.’_

“Admiral,” he reported, steady as a stone. “There’s been a setback.” 

\------------

Kaidan crossed his arms to keep himself from fidgeting. They’d been waiting in the War Room long enough for the rumor mill to wear itself out. He’d heard enough. The mission had gone badly. Vega and Liara were in the med bay. People were worried that the war effort was doomed, fruitless, that they were all well and truly screwed. Kaidan didn’t believe that. Shepard would find a way to win, no matter what it took. And as for Shepard...people were saying everything between “he looked like hell” and “he looked like something that just crawled OUT of Hell”. That was what had Kaidan fidgeting. Because Shepard _would_ crawl through hell to win this war, but whether he came out of it without tearing himself into pieces was a whole other story. 

The door to the Vidcom slid open. A chorus of gasps and murmured rose--and were instantly hushed--as Shepard walked out. Kaidan’s train of thought caught, tripped, and froze. 

“Ah, hell…” he heard Garrus mutter beside him.

_’Nathaniel...’_

He was out of uniform, had skipped his shirt, and his N7-stamped dogtags lay loose on his chest. Kaidan focused on those. The whole picture was too much to take in immediately. 

Shepard had rising trauma bruises discoloring his upper body. Dirt on his face. Singed edges to his hair. The muscles across his shoulders were corded, tense, wound so tightly Kaidan could see it from across the room. And his eyes… no longer the deep grey that reminded Kaidan of stormclouds. Now they were a set of triple pinpricks of angry, glowing crimson. Like fire. Like exposed plasma. Like the red of a Reaper’s beam just as it opened up. 

But the worst part was his face. There was a crack in Shepard’s skin, spidering across his cheek, the skin split open and peeled back like it had burst from too much internal pressure. Dried blood ran down from the crack, marking out the curve of his cheekbone and the stress lines on his face. 

Shepard cast his crimson gaze over the room. Kaidan braced himself to meet it, not to look away from the unnatural lights, to let Shepard-- _Nathaniel_ \--know, _”I’ve got your back”_. But Shepard didn’t look at Kaidan, he passed right over. Kaidan frowned. 

Shepard stalked down the stairs and leaned his hands on the holo-table. A muscle in his jaw worked and Kaidan watched the tension pass from there back into Shepard’s shoulders. Shepard looked up and into the middle distance. His voice was steady, edged in steel.

“I’m sure you’re all aware by now; the mission to Thessia did not go well.” 

Kaidan swallowed. Shepard delivered the facts in a deadpan: interception by Cerberus, the Catalyst data stolen, Vega and Liara critically injured. It looked bad. It looked like the war was all but lost. 

But Shepard refused to be beaten. He pierced through the group again, his gaze as sharp as his voice. All steel, and fire, and _rage_. 

“We will **not** let Cerberus get away with this. We will **not** stand by and let them have this victory. We sure as **hell** will not let a couple of arrogant assholes doom us all to annihilation.” 

Shepard stood, and paced. Stalked back and forth like a tiger in a too-small cage. “We are going to **hunt. Them. Down.** Every lead, every rumor, every suspicious outpost and every _goddamned_ gloating email. We _will_ find them. And we will _break_ them.” 

Shepard jabbed at the table. “I will **not** lose this war to a handful of egotistical assholes. We are **going** after Cerberus. We are **getting** that data back. We are **getting** this fucking **war** back on track and kicking the fucking _Reapers_ off of ALL our goddamned planets, if I have to _personally_ tear the limbs off of every single Cerberus agent in this entire goddamned galaxy!” 

A spiderline crack suddenly split open down the side of Shepard’s face. He barely flinched, just a twitch of pain before the mask was back on. Blood oozed down his face, and he glared around the room again--once more, skipping Kaidan. Avoiding him. 

Why? 

“Do I make myself clear?” Shepard said, and got a chorus of not-quite enthusiastic responses. He wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand, and Kaidan saw it shake. “I want everyone on this. Anything you can think of, even if it seems like a longshot. Call me the instant you’ve got something. All of you.” 

 

Shepard turned and walked up the stairs. He called out a “Dismissed” over his shoulder as the door slid open and he stepped through. 

He was running again. 

Kaidan chased him. 

“Shepard!” he tried to call out. Shepard didn’t stop. Didn’t even turn. He got into the elevator first and forced the door closed. Kaidan glared at it. The return car seemed to take three times as long as normal to get back, and then five times as long to make the journey up to Shepard’s cabin. 

When the elevator finally let him out, the red light on the cabin door stared Kaidan in the face. Shepard had locked him out. 

“Oh _hell_ no,” Kaidan muttered, pulled up his omnitool, and started a hack. Just as he finished, there was a loud _crash_ and a roaring sound. The door slid open. Kaidan rushed through. 

 

He skidded to a halt at the top of the stairs. A pool of water and broken glass was spreading out across the floor of the lower level. Mass effect forcefields had sprang up on either side of the breach in the fishtank, which was slowly draining. And there stood Shepard in the middle of it, soaking wet, his fist still through the glass. 

Kaidan walked over slowly, avoiding the worst of the mess while keeping his eyes on Shepard. “Well,” he said dryly, “it’s a good thing you never got any fish.” 

Shepard looked away from him. “Kaidan. You shouldn’t be here right now.” 

Kaidan made it to Shepard’s side, and challenged him. “Why?” 

Shepard looked back at him, looked at the hole he’d punched in the glass, and raised his eyebrows significantly. 

Kaidan smiled gently. “You’re not gonna hurt me, Nate.” He reached out, took Shepard’s arm, and guided it carefully out of the hole. There were shards shoved into Shepard’s skin, blood dripping from the wounds. “I know you better than that.” 

He led Nathaniel over to the couch--which had so far escaped any damage--and made him sit. The commander collapsed down, defeated. He wouldn’t meet Kaidan’s eyes. “Do you have a medkit up here?” Kaidan asked. 

He replied mechanically. “Desk drawer. Bottom left.” 

Kaidan went up into the bathroom and grabbed a towel, then retrieved the kit. When he came back, Shepard was leaning back in the couch, head set on the back of it turned towards the wall, staring at himself in the reflection of the metallic bulkhead plates. Kaidan felt a fist clench around his heart. The look on Shepard’s face… 

Broken. Nathaniel Shepard was _broken_. 

Kaidan took a careful breath around the lump in his throat. He sat down next to Shepard, pulled the coffee table up and set out the first aid supplies. He smoothed down the towel, and reached out, touched the edge of Shepard’s wrist. “Give me your arm?” he said, gently. 

Shepard didn’t protest. Kaidan pulled his arm over the towel to catch the blood, and started getting the glass out of his skin. It was hard to focus, hard to keep his hands steady. Shepard, stoic as he was, still twitched his arm whenever Kaidan pulled out a shard, still suppressed a small hiss of pain from the antiseptic burn of the medigel. 

Kaidan couldn’t keep quiet. “Really did a number on your arm…” he said, just to fill the silence. 

“It’s not even real skin,” Shepard replied, hollowly. “It’s synthetic.” 

“Well, it bleeds like it’s real,” Kaidan commented as he pulled out another shard, swabbed and covered another wound. 

Shepard didn’t answer for a moment. He deflated, sinking further into the couch, deadweight in Kaidan’s hands. He answered, low, from an aching pain. “I look like a husk.” 

Kaidan paused and closed his eyes. Pain and guilt tasted bitter on his tongue. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, “for what I said on Mars.” 

“Don’t,” Shepard said. “You had your reasons.” 

Kaidan leaned down and lay his forehead on the side of Shepard’s face. The uncracked side. Breathed him in. Even covered in tank-water he could smell the afterburn of Shepard’s battle. The red-metal tang of spent heatsinks and sharp burn of rocket gunsmoke. The sweat from his body and the blood from his face. The pieces of _him_. “I’m still sorry,” he murmured. 

“We’d just left Vancouver burning,” Shepard murmured back, “and I didn’t give you time to breathe.” 

Kaidan lay his head down, stared at Shepard’s profile. “I didn’t mean what I said.” 

“I know.” 

They were silent a moment. Only the hum of the drive and the slow rush of the draining fishtank to fill the quiet. Kaidan leaned back up and took Shepard’s arm. There was a couple large shards left, one placed worryingly across his wrist, bisecting the veins. He winced when he looked, and got back to work, leaving that for last.

“I forgive you,” Shepard said into the silence. 

Kaidan paused in the act of covering a wound, and looked up. Shepard was looking at him. That crimson gaze didn’t fit in his face. Neither did that broken, crushed expression. Still, Kaidan felt a burden he didn’t know he was carrying lift. “I forgive you, too,” he answered quietly. 

Their eyes met, and Kaidan smiled quietly when he saw Nate’s expression soften. 

He looked down at Shepard’s arm, down at the shard in his wrist, and winced. He got a pressure bandage ready--this one was going to be messy. Shepard leaned up, set his arm over the towel, and looked at Kaidan. 

“Ready?” Kaidan asked him. Shepard nodded. Kaidan pulled the shard out, Shepard hissed in pain as blood burst out, and Kaidan quickly sealed the bandage over the wound. Shepard closed his eyes, wincing, kept his hand steady as the omnigel worked itself in. Kaidan held his hand, massaged his palm. 

“Don’t do this again, okay?” Kaidan whispered. His stomach twisted at the sight of Shepard’s blood soaking into the towel. “Please.” 

Shepard looked up at him, met his eyes. Kaidan felt something pass between them. He knew Shepard wouldn’t make any promises, but … “Thank you,” Shepard said. Quiet. And he was looking at Kaidan in a way that had heat spreading through his chest. 

The moment was broken as Sam’s voice crackled through the comm, making the both of them look up. _”Commander, sir?”_ she said. 

“Talk to me, Traynor,” Shepard acknowledged, the Commander Voice immediately back in place. 

_”Commander... I may have something.”_

Shepard looked at Kaidan, then sprang to his feet, already moving toward the elevator. “I’ll be there immediately.” 

Kaidan was left scrambling in his wake, protesting, “Hey, wait, you’re not gonna--at least get a _shirt_ on, Shepard!” 

He barely made it in the elevator, and Shepard gave him a hard stare. “Later. This is too important.” 

Kaidan boggled at him. Commander Shepard, dripping wet, topless, with his arm wrapped up. Never stopping to breathe. _Too important._

 

Kaidan had his work cut out for him if he was going to keep Shepard in one piece through this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took a while, sorry. I have a crazy life.

**Author's Note:**

> The Illusive Man is more difficult to write for than one might imagine (especially when I haven't finished the game yet and don't really understand his motives...).


End file.
